Welcome onto the scene, a new South African Social Media Performance Tool.  Brandometer offers businesses the chance to analyse how well or how poorly their social media campaigns have been performing, across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even MXit.

What is Brandometer?

A new online service dubbed Brandometer was launched yesterday, benchmarking South Africa’s most influential and powerful brandsaccording to social media relevance. Brandometer was started by Michal Wronski, who founded and headed up Fuseware, a company which focuses on social media monitoring and analytics with clients such as Vodacom, 8ta, SAB, Nokia and Mxit.

Brandometer aims to be the official influence scorecard that brands and agencies can turn to in the future.Brandometer lists South Africa’s top social brands according to various ranking criteria on Mxit, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“Social media has gone mainstream in South Africa. There are over one million South Africans using Twitter, many of them on a daily basis. The Brandometer is an official benchmark to gauge the crème de la crème of South African brands on social media,” the Brandometer website states.

How Brandometer works

The Brandometer tool uses “the industry standard” Klout score to gauge your Twitter influence. For Facebook meanwhile, each page’s following and engagement is reportedly analysed to calculate an influence score.  The process for LinkedIn is similar, although connections and recommendations are also scanned and benchmarked to create an influence score.

For MXit, Fuseware reportedly works with the social chat giant to retrieve anonymous statistics and demographics. It claims that no user data is collected in the process.

It seems if your brand isn’t on Brandometer in the future, then perhaps you will want to change your social media strategy.

Nowadays a website is an essential part of every profession. Whether you are the owner of small or big company, you need to have your own website for many reasons. However, a dull looking and uninteresting website is as good as no website at all. Having a website is one thing but having a well designed one is another. Through website design you can give your business an online identity and global presence. Through web marketing  your business will enjoy a good online business channel once you make entry in the World Wide Web.

Your website and its design represent your company and its image. Think of it as someone that represents your brand to your valued customers on your behalf. Surely you would want this person to represent you in the best way possible. So why would you settle for a less than perfect website design?

What is website design?

Website design is not about making your website look pretty and colourful. It is creating an effective interface between technology and people which allows them to present their information and use it for a meaningful purpose.

Why is website design important?

The design of a website should be appealing to the visitor. In order to achieve, website designers pay close attention to the following on each web page:

• Colour selection
• Layout
• Font style
• Overall shapes and forms used

Website design holds much importance when it comes to online reputation. A good website design can drag maximum flow of web traffic to your site. More traffic means more business and more business means more potential for growth and earning.

Where to find good web designers?

A good website design requires a good website designer. Where do find good designers? Since website designing and hosting have become every business’s immediate need, many digital marketing agencies have emerged to meet this demand. A digital marketing agency will not simply design your website but also offer other services including:

• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
• PPC – Pay Per Click Advertising
• SMO – Social Media Optimisation

It is important to understand that, from an overall point of view, there are many key elements that make up a successful website. The look and feel of the website is the first approach in determining how your website visitors will see you and your company. However, the content needs to be taken into consideration before the design process begins.

With that in mind, it is important for a web designer to not only design for aesthetic value, but to also understand how the different areas of the layout will affect the visitor’s actions.

Layout is one of the most important elements in a website design. A site that lacks structure can leave visitors feeling frustrated. This usually results in them exiting your website site without looking any further. Visitors need to feel guided when viewing a site and not be left questioning where your details are.

A great website design is more important the website itself. It’s the design, look and feel of your site that will convert regular visitors into potential customers.

The Apple iPad 2 has been out for nearly a year now, so it’s time to say hello to the highly anticipated and most talked about tablet device, the Apple iPad 3. The web is teeming with rumors about specs and the release date. The official launch date for the iPad 3 in South Africa is yet to be announced. However, it will be released in April to other parts of the word including:

• USA

• France

• Germany

• Japan

• Italy

• Switzerland

• Australia

• Canada

• UK

So what can we expect from the iPad 3?

The iPad 3 is obviously expected to be a better tablet in one or more ways than its predecessor. However, the specs that are currently available on the internet are merely estimations thus far.

Here are the new specs. Keep in mind these are estimated specs as the “official” specs are not released and may change at any time.

• 1.2GHz dual-core A57CPU

• 512 MB RAM

• 16GB, 32GB, 64GB storage options

• Front, Rear, and Side Cameras, front is 1080p, rear is 1080p, side is VGA

• 9.7″ LED display with 1024×768 screen resolution at 132ppi

• GPU said to be 21x faster

• Video output supports up to 1080p

• Runs iOS 6

• 12 hour battery life

In a nutshell, the Apple iPad3 will feature a new, thinner and sleeker design, down nearly 20% in size compared to the iPad 2. It will also support full touchscreen HD display with a screen resolution of 2048 x 1536. Apart from that, the iPad 3 will have a lighter battery, reducing the weight of the tablet and will also have a longer life.

It is also expected that the iPad 3 will have a wireless charging technology, also supporting wireless data transfer.

You can follow Apple South Africa on Twitter for updates regarding the I Pad 3